Latest / Inside Politics / Tony Wright on the best and worst prime ministers, and the courage needed now

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Tony Wright on the best and worst prime ministers, and the courage needed now · Inside Politics

0:03
S1: I'm Jacqueline Maley, and you're listening to Inside Politics from
0:06
S1: the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
0:09
S1: And today we have something very, very special and a
0:12
S1: little bit different because our beloved associate editor and special writer,
0:15
S1: Tony Rice, is going to be stepping back from daily
0:18
S1: newsroom duties after 50 years in journalism. This week, Tony's
0:22
S1: covered federal politics for about 30 years, and he's seen
0:25
S1: a lot. Readers who follow his work will know that
0:28
S1: his political observations are always astute. They're wry, they're funny,
0:31
S1: and they're delivered with plenty of heart. He's a beautiful writer,
0:34
S1: but unusually for a journalist, he also has quite a
0:37
S1: compassionate eye as well as a steely one when required. Yesterday,
0:41
S1: the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, spoke about Tony in Question
0:44
S1: Time and said that Tony has always been a harvester
0:47
S1: of moments.
0:49
S2: Finding the small things that so many of us may
0:53
S2: miss and deftly weaving them into a much bigger picture.
0:59
S2: Many riders.
1:00
S1: So this week we want to harvest some of Tony's
1:03
S1: moments for our podcast. Tony, welcome to the show.
1:07
S3: Thanks very much, Jacqueline.
1:08
S1: And of course, we have our chief political correspondent, Paul
1:11
S1: Satchell in the studio in Canberra with Tony as well. Tony,
1:14
S1: I really love that description of you as a harvester
1:17
S1: of moments, because you arrived in the press gallery in
1:20
S1: 1989 as chief political correspondent for The Canberra Times. Bob
1:24
S1: Hawke was the Prime minister and he was very much
1:27
S1: on the front foot with you, wasn't he? He invited
1:29
S1: you straight away down to his office to meet him.
1:31
S1: Can you tell us what happened at that meeting?
1:34
S3: Well, he's a very canny politician, Bob Hawke, and he
1:38
S3: was also he also had this charisma, I suppose, that
1:40
S3: people used to talk about. And I got I got
1:43
S3: a call in my office. I was still very wet
1:46
S3: behind the ears, didn't have a clue what I was
1:48
S3: doing really, and the voice said, ah, Hawkie would like
1:52
S3: to see you in his office. And I thought, of
1:54
S3: course he was going to drop a great story or
1:57
S3: something rather. So I grabbed my notebook and finally found
2:00
S3: my way through the labyrinth of corridors to his office.
2:06
S3: And he's sitting there with a cigar and he said, ah, mate,
2:08
S3: you don't need the, uh, the notebook. His purpose was twofold.
2:13
S3: I think one was, uh, generosity to somebody new in
2:20
S3: the gallery. The other, I suspect, was that he, he
2:24
S3: wanted to, uh, harness this new bloke in the gallery
2:29
S3: just in case, down the track, because he, he said, look, uh, yeah,
2:34
S3: if you need need a steer on any of, uh,
2:36
S3: any story you're doing, um, just just give us a call,
2:39
S3: you know, give give the office a call and we'll
2:41
S3: fix you up. So, uh, I took a little while
2:44
S3: to realize that, of course, he was, uh, being a
2:48
S3: politician there, but he was. He was a very interesting guy. Um,
2:53
S3: Bob Hawke in 1989. Of course, he'd already been prime
2:57
S3: minister for some time since 1983. A very seasoned politician
3:03
S3: and a very natural politician, he came into politics. So
3:08
S3: from the outside and straight to straight to the prime ministership, really.
3:12
S3: So his way of being able to relate to somebody
3:18
S3: who was pretty nervous, I've got to say, I was, um,
3:21
S3: was very practiced.
3:23
S1: So he had those marvellous interpersonal skills. He was an
3:25
S1: incredible advocate for policy. He knew how to wrangle his
3:28
S1: party room. And when you met him, he would have
3:30
S1: really been at the height of his powers. I mean,
3:33
S1: can you give listeners a sense of what what it
3:34
S1: was like to see a really great prime minister in
3:38
S1: full flight and, you know, effectively changing the country and
3:41
S1: pushing through all these really great reforms? What was it
3:43
S1: like to see him at the height of his powers?
3:45
S3: Well, of course it was. It was a double act.
3:47
S3: There was Hawke and Keating. Keating and Hawke, you know.
3:50
S3: And so a lot of the policies that had, uh,
3:55
S3: had changed were changing Australia's economy and Australia's outlook on
3:59
S3: the world had come from both of their offices and
4:03
S3: from the cabinet itself. Hawke, as I understood it and
4:07
S3: learned from others, really did seek consensus among his senior ministers.
4:14
S3: He didn't didn't rule the roost and demand that they
4:17
S3: follow whatever. He allowed things to percolate and to be
4:24
S3: debated and worked out. And he usually got, I suppose,
4:28
S3: the outcome that he wanted in the first place. But
4:32
S3: he was already, I think, getting to that period where
4:37
S3: the cracks were going to show. And that happened the
4:41
S3: following year in the 1990 election, where he very nearly
4:45
S3: lost it to to Peacock. And of course, uh, Paul
4:52
S3: Keating by then, uh, was pretty much at the end
4:55
S3: of his patience and decided he was going to go
4:57
S3: for the prime ministership.
4:59
S1: So when did you see any sort of moments of
5:01
S1: real vulnerability in Hawke? Because he did have, you know,
5:03
S1: a famously sort of volatile personal life, you might say.
5:05
S1: And he had some real tragedy within his family life.
5:09
S1: Did you ever see those close personal moments when he
5:12
S1: expressed vulnerability?
5:14
S3: I can't say that I saw them close up. Of course,
5:18
S3: there was the famous occasion where he went on TV and, um,
5:22
S3: confirmed that one of his daughters had a heroin addiction,
5:27
S3: and he spilt real tears there.
5:29
S4: You don't cease to be a husband. You don't you
5:35
S4: don't cease to be a father like any father. I
5:40
S4: loved my daughter. I trust her.
5:45
S5: That I think.
5:47
S3: Hawke was somebody who could spill tears and not feel
5:51
S3: perturbed about it. He. I think he was pretty, pretty
5:54
S3: sure of who he was. And of course, a Prime
5:57
S3: Minister has, by dint of the fact that they have
6:01
S3: made it to the prime ministership, a great deal of
6:05
S3: self-confidence and, uh, and belief in their powers, even in
6:12
S3: those times, I guess at 3:00 in the morning when
6:15
S3: everybody wonders how things are going, really? Um, he didn't
6:20
S3: really show that. Um, not at that time anyway.
6:23
S1: Paul Keating obviously came along next and he famously said
6:27
S1: that when you change, Prime Minister, you change the country.
6:30
S1: How did the country change and how did politics change
6:34
S1: with Keating? What was his leadership style to observe close up?
6:38
S3: Well, um, number one, Keating came in to to try
6:45
S3: to save the furniture because Peacock had nearly won the
6:48
S3: 1990 election. And Keating challenged halfway through the next year
6:53
S3: and then won at the end of 1991. And coming
6:58
S3: along was John Hewson with this giant manifesto called fightback,
7:04
S3: and that Keating had already said he could defeat. But
7:10
S3: Hawke couldn't. His argument was that it wasn't an arithmetical, uh, argument.
7:15
S3: It was about culture and how it would affect the nation. And, uh,
7:21
S3: and he did. He, he he devoted most of that period.
7:26
S3: And you've got to remember, it was just after a,
7:29
S3: the economic downturn that the recession to have the recession,
7:35
S3: we had to have. Um, and a lot of. And
7:37
S3: he knew that a lot of people were against him,
7:40
S3: particularly the middle class that felt that it had been
7:43
S3: let down and hollowed out. Um, but he so he
7:48
S3: became this, uh, jackhammer, I suppose, um, going at John Hewson,
7:54
S3: day after day after day and the fight back. And
7:58
S3: you'll recall that very famous occasion in Parliament where Hewson said, well,
8:05
S3: if you're so confident, why don't you call an election?
8:08
S3: And he went. Because I want to do you slowly.
8:13
S3: There's got to be a bit of sport in this
8:16
S3: for all of us.
8:16
S6: I asked the Prime Minister, if you are so confident
8:20
S6: about your view of Fight Back, why won't you call
8:23
S6: an early election? Of. Course. I might because I want
8:39
S6: to move slowly. I want to do you slowly. I know,
8:47
S6: I know, there's got to be a bit of sport
8:48
S6: in this for all of us. No, no. There's got
8:51
S6: to be a bit of sport in this for all
8:52
S6: of us.
8:52
S3: He had that ability to just grab the moment and
8:59
S3: turn it into something that, you know, put your hair back. Really. Um,
9:04
S3: but and he won the election. I don't think he
9:07
S3: really believed he was going to win at the end.
9:10
S3: I don't think a lot of his staff did either.
9:12
S3: And having won in 1993, um, I think he became
9:19
S3: too triumphant. And for, for the, the taste of a
9:24
S3: lot of Australians. And he wasn't really sure where he
9:30
S3: was going. I don't think he'd done all his all
9:33
S3: his hard policy stuff during the period when he was treasurer.
9:38
S3: He'd had his big political moment as prime minister, and
9:41
S3: then he was at a bit of a loss. And, uh,
9:45
S3: of course, then came this extraordinary situation where John Howard
9:50
S3: was on the rise and Paul Keating couldn't believe that
9:54
S3: and it really, really unsettled him.
9:58
S7: It's often said, Tony, that the political leaders of today
10:03
S7: don't have the same ability to argue for big reform
10:07
S7: and push a case and convince the public. And people
10:10
S7: obviously cite Hawke, Keating and Howard, which I'm sure Jack's
10:12
S7: about to go into. Do you subscribe to that theory,
10:15
S7: or do you think that the modern era for a
10:18
S7: number of different factors, both the crises that we're facing,
10:20
S7: but also the modern form of communication make, makes governing
10:25
S7: just far harder these days?
10:26
S3: I think it does. Courage is required, of course, and
10:31
S3: Hawke and Keating had it in spades. What they also had, however,
10:35
S3: was a high, um, primary vote. Both they and the
10:41
S3: coalition had had high primary votes. So they knew where
10:45
S3: their support was to to a pretty large extent. And
10:49
S3: they worked on, on, on that. Since then there has
10:54
S3: been this fractured period, of course, that began when Rudd
10:59
S3: was rolled and Gillard and Abbott and Turnbull and Morrison
11:04
S3: all came in, and it was as if they were
11:06
S3: all gasping for air and trying to work out where
11:10
S3: they could go. And, and that has left an aftertaste,
11:16
S3: if you like, where courage is in relatively short supply
11:22
S3: when really big. Uh, the big vision thing, as Keating
11:26
S3: used to talk about it might, might be required.
11:29
S7: Sorry to interrupt you. Keating was known for his very
11:32
S7: sharp tongue in public, but also in private. And I've
11:36
S7: been told that you were on the end of some
11:37
S7: particularly sharp phone calls from Paul Keating.
11:41
S3: I quite like that, actually. Um, he came at you
11:45
S3: from the front. He didn't, uh, circle around and put
11:49
S3: little stories around or come at you from behind. If
11:53
S3: I'd written something in The Sydney Morning Herald, which you've
11:56
S3: got to recall was his hometown newspaper that he really
12:00
S3: disliked and and disagreed with, he would ring directly to
12:07
S3: my home in the morning and he would he would
12:12
S3: really go, you, you you knew that you'd you had
12:15
S3: been talked to when Paul Keating had been on the phone.
12:18
S3: But there was always a rhythm to it. He would
12:23
S3: use every bit of the vernacular that was available to
12:28
S3: him for some time. Then he'd sort of plateau, and
12:32
S3: then he would start coming down the other side, explaining
12:36
S3: himself and trying to talk policy and why why you
12:40
S3: were wrong and why he was right and so forth.
12:42
S3: Quite often you'd get a story. So I didn't mind that,
12:46
S3: and I certainly wasn't the only one. There were plenty
12:48
S3: of plenty of journalists who who got that treatment. He
12:52
S3: was very unusual in that he and the calls would
12:58
S3: go on for a very long time. My father would
13:01
S3: come and stay with us quite often in Canberra. And
13:04
S3: he actually believed that. Paul Keating rang me every morning
13:08
S3: for a while. It wasn't like that at all. It
13:10
S3: was just that when he was there, it happened to
13:13
S3: be coincidental. I'd got one of these calls.
13:16
S1: Obviously, Howard was the next prime minister after Keating, Tony,
13:19
S1: and he was a very, very different style of politician indeed.
13:23
S1: He was also an incredible politician and probably one of
13:26
S1: our best prime ministers. And he had none of the
13:28
S1: outward charm or the sort of emotion that you're talking
13:32
S1: about with Hawke and with Keating. But he did have
13:35
S1: this particular political magic that kept people coming back for more,
13:39
S1: and enabled him really to take the Australian population along
13:42
S1: with him for some very big decisions and reforms. What
13:45
S1: was that political magic that that Howard possessed?
13:48
S3: Well, I think he he stated it even before he
13:52
S3: became Prime Minister. He said the times will suit him.
13:56
S3: What he meant by that was that this, uh, very, uh,
14:02
S3: very hard period of conflict that, uh, Paul Keating had
14:05
S3: been in charge of and so forth, had got on
14:08
S3: people's nerves. So he actually said he wanted Australians to be, um,
14:13
S3: relaxed and comfortable. Yeah. Well, underneath that, of course, was, uh,
14:19
S3: was a lot of paddling going on. And he, he
14:21
S3: did have a whole agenda at work. He had a, uh,
14:28
S3: an ability to sniff the breeze like very few other
14:32
S3: politicians I've ever seen. And I saw how he did
14:35
S3: that a bit. He carried out his own polls and
14:38
S3: personal polls. He would invite, say, a group of journalists
14:42
S3: around to the to the lodge and have a have
14:46
S3: a roast and and, uh, you know, some potatoes and
14:50
S3: a cup of tea. And, um, then he would stoke
14:54
S3: the fire and he would ask a question that didn't
14:57
S3: sound pointed, but you would discover later on was very important.
15:01
S3: I remember, for instance, one night we were there and
15:04
S3: he asked all of us and there were about, I
15:07
S3: don't know, 5 or 6 of us. Do you have
15:09
S3: personal private insurance? Right. Health insurance. And we all did
15:16
S3: as it turned out. And he said, well, you know,
15:18
S3: why wait, why do you why do you have it?
15:20
S3: And I think we, you know, we sort of stammered
15:22
S3: a bit and said, well, we could afford it. And
15:25
S3: it was probably a good idea and blah, blah, blah.
15:28
S3: Within a few weeks, he came out with this big
15:31
S3: policy to basically force people to consider taking private health insurance.
15:38
S3: He'd he'd been polling everyone he came across, I think, um,
15:44
S3: once again, before the, uh, Referendum on the Republic, which
15:51
S3: of course he was against. He came to a big
15:54
S3: corridor party in Parliament House. They were pretty roistering affairs,
16:01
S3: and he wandered around and asked everyone that I could
16:05
S3: see what. What's your. What's your point? What did you
16:09
S3: agree with? A with a Republican. The general answer was,
16:13
S3: oh yeah, we do. But it's not top of our
16:17
S3: priorities or top of mind. And he would mutter, yeah,
16:21
S3: not not top of mind, not top, top of mind.
16:23
S3: So he, he was, he was setting his own agendas
16:29
S3: and then trying them out on, on people without even
16:34
S3: those people knowing what he was on about. And then
16:37
S3: following through, um, he, he knew that Pauline Hanson was
16:44
S3: a threat, uh, particularly after 1998, when One Nation won
16:49
S3: 11 seats in the in the Queensland state election. And, uh,
16:54
S3: and from that moment on, immigration and particularly asylum seekers
17:00
S3: was became one of his really big policy issues because
17:05
S3: he knew that she would harness that. And of course,
17:08
S3: it ended up with the Tampa and the Pacific solution
17:11
S3: and all those sort of things.
17:13
S1: Yeah. Which ended up being quite controversial policies for Howard, but.
17:17
S3: Also fairly mildly.
17:18
S1: Yeah. But also ensured his ongoing popularity with a large
17:22
S1: sector of the electorate and have now come back to
17:24
S1: haunt us. And I want to ask you about that later.
17:27
S1: But just to move through time, I mean, you went
17:29
S1: on a lot of overseas trips with the prime ministers
17:31
S1: and perhaps ministers as well. What was it like? What's
17:35
S1: it like to observe those prime ministers, leaders up close
17:38
S1: and personal and sort of in an off campus environment?
17:40
S1: What do you learn in that environment that you don't
17:43
S1: see in Canberra?
17:44
S3: Well, you learnt quite a bit because particularly in the
17:48
S3: earlier days when we were flying around on the old
17:51
S3: 707 VIP plane, the Prime Minister of the day, and
17:56
S3: whether it be Bob Hawke or Paul Keating. And for
18:00
S3: a while, until, uh, um, John Howard got a plane
18:05
S3: that was too small to take, take, take journalists, they
18:09
S3: would they would wander down the back and have a
18:11
S3: bit of a chat and you could talk about anything
18:14
S3: because it really was off the record. We were we
18:16
S3: were in the sky, you know, and, uh, you got
18:19
S3: to know these people quite intimately, I think, um, in
18:23
S3: a way that you couldn't possibly around Parliament House. I
18:27
S3: remember during an election campaign, Kim Beazley, this was that
18:32
S3: famous election campaign that I was talking about after Tampa. And,
18:37
S3: and the Twin Towers came down.
18:40
S1: 2000 and was it 2000, 2001.
18:42
S7: 2001?
18:43
S3: Yeah, 2001 and Kim Beazley came down the back of
18:46
S3: the plane and all the journalists were there. And he
18:50
S3: he began by saying, you know, we're going to win
18:52
S3: this one. And then within a couple of minutes he
18:57
S3: was saying, you know, we we've we've done everything we can. Um,
19:04
S3: I don't know how this is going to go. And
19:07
S3: then he was slumped in a seat saying, you know,
19:09
S3: if we don't win, at least we gave it everything.
19:13
S3: And right in front of our eyes, we saw a
19:18
S3: politician who was running for the prime ministership or hoping
19:21
S3: to get there, talk himself out of it. Um, and
19:25
S3: that I think had a, had an effect on a
19:27
S3: lot of journalists following it. You sort of saw this
19:30
S3: vulnerability of, of Kim Beazley, a man of great intellect who, um,
19:36
S3: also had the ability, unlike a lot of them, to
19:40
S3: see both sides of a question. And, and therefore he wasn't,
19:45
S3: he wasn't, um, this sharp, sharp tool coming, coming at politics.
19:51
S3: He was a, he was a man who wanted to
19:53
S3: think about it. And unfortunately, he thought himself out of
19:56
S3: winning right in front of us.
19:57
S1: The very sort of character traits that made him, gave
20:01
S1: him his humanity, made him perhaps not the best politician.
20:04
S3: What.
20:05
S1: What who's the best prime minister? You think you've covered
20:08
S1: the strongest leader?
20:11
S3: Well, the two strongest leaders really were Bob Hawke and
20:15
S3: and John Howard and both of them. It could be
20:19
S3: seen in the great length of time they remain prime ministers.
20:23
S3: I'm not talking about agreeing with them or disagreeing with
20:26
S3: them on on policy or the way they went about it,
20:29
S3: but they were both very strong. Um, and at the end,
20:33
S3: of course, um, you could see that you could watch
20:36
S3: that strength eking away when, when, uh, Keating went at Hawke,
20:43
S3: and then when John Howard had outstayed his welcome, I think,
20:49
S3: and he sent out his, uh, his cabinet ministers to
20:53
S3: find out what people thought. And, and got Alexander Downer
20:56
S3: to report back about what they were thinking. And he
21:00
S3: did report back that they thought he should step aside. Well,
21:04
S3: he refused to step aside. He lost his seat. So
21:08
S3: there is there is that period where a prime minister
21:11
S3: can be seen as a very powerful, very strong prime minister, um,
21:16
S3: running the country the way he feels best. But in
21:20
S3: the end, there are tears.
21:23
S1: Yeah. In the end everything changes and all periods pass, right.
21:27
S1: Who is the worst Prime minister you covered?
21:32
S3: Well, that's a bit of a leading question. I, I think, um,
21:36
S3: I think Scott Morrison was, uh, perhaps the, the, the,
21:41
S3: the Prime Minister who you ended up not having all
21:45
S3: that much time for or I didn't. The sort of
21:48
S3: things he did, um, and where he'd come from were
21:54
S3: made him the sort of Prime minister who really wasn't
21:58
S3: suited to the job. I think he'd come from that
22:01
S3: period where he was, you know, running Border Force and
22:04
S3: all that sort of thing where he, he, he became
22:06
S3: a very secretive man and thought that was terrific because
22:09
S3: we'd ask him questions about asylum seekers. And he'd, he'd
22:13
S3: just say, well, that's an on, on water matter or
22:16
S3: operational matter, and we wouldn't talk about it. So when
22:19
S3: he became prime minister, I think a lot of people
22:21
S3: didn't quite trust him. And the way he got there
22:25
S3: when he did Turnbull in a few really, a few
22:29
S3: hours after he'd declared to the cameras that his only
22:33
S3: ambition was for his prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. I mean,
22:37
S3: he he had a pretty tough time because of Covid and, uh,
22:43
S3: he didn't handle other things very well. For instance, the
22:47
S3: bushfires pretty, pretty much, uh, stripped him of reputation. The
22:52
S3: part where he was overseas in having a holiday whilst
22:56
S3: Australia burnt. And then he came back and said, well,
22:59
S3: you know, I don't hold a hose, mate. Those sort
23:01
S3: of things didn't resonate very well. And in the end,
23:06
S3: when he was discovered to have made himself a minister
23:11
S3: of five different portfolios secretly, he not only lost a
23:17
S3: lot of points with those who looked at him from
23:20
S3: the outside, but from the inside, his own ministers and
23:23
S3: his own colleagues. And I think in the end, people
23:26
S3: look back and go, you know, it wasn't a great period.
23:30
S1: Yeah. I mean, there was a running theme with Scott Morrison,
23:32
S1: wasn't there, where, um, you know, rightly or wrongly, the
23:35
S1: perception was that he, he had a, had a problem
23:37
S1: with taking accountability and he wouldn't take responsibility for his
23:40
S1: own actions and mistakes in taking the historical view. How
23:44
S1: do you rate Anthony Albanese as a prime minister?
23:48
S3: Um, as has been said previously about the French Revolution, too,
23:55
S3: too early to tell. Um but he, he, um he's
23:59
S3: already completed one term of course, and he's won another election.
24:03
S1: That's, that's an age by the by the standards of
24:06
S1: modern Australian politics.
24:07
S3: He's probably having a fair bit of fortune actually. Um
24:10
S3: because the opposition, the conservative opposition has essentially collapsed. Uh,
24:18
S3: one nation has come in to fill that vacuum, and
24:21
S3: it doesn't look as if he is likely to be, um,
24:26
S3: to be toppled at the next election, even though his, uh,
24:31
S3: ratings are way down. I mean, the, uh, I think
24:36
S3: the government's primary vote is somewhere around 28%. Well, it's
24:41
S3: not all that long ago that if you heard those figures,
24:44
S3: you would say, well, they're finished. He he's not. And
24:48
S3: he and he keeps battling on, I mean, yeah. Um,
24:51
S3: he has that, uh, uh, he appears cautious, but quite
24:58
S3: a bit does get done. And every now and again
25:02
S3: he allows that sort of tearaway young elbow to appear, um,
25:08
S3: to his, uh, deleterious sort of, uh, approach or outcome.
25:14
S3: I mean, you know, going on a podcast and talking
25:17
S3: about Kylie and melons and so forth just didn't work. It, uh, maybe,
25:22
S3: maybe these guys all want to be hawky and they can't.
25:26
S1: I know I'm jumping around a bit here, but I
25:28
S1: do want to ask about Julia Gillard. And that was
25:30
S1: a period when I was in Canberra too. We worked
25:32
S1: side by side and we had a lot of fun
25:35
S1: and a lot. It was an interesting time to be
25:37
S1: covering politics. It was a particularly volatile time. It was
25:41
S1: full of a lot of personal attacks and vitriol. Was
25:44
S1: that a sort of step change, you know, from your
25:46
S1: point of view, having come from sort of like the kinder,
25:49
S1: gentler years of Howard and Rudd and then step changing
25:52
S1: to Gillard minority government. Can you just reflect on that
25:55
S1: a bit for us?
25:57
S3: Yeah, look, it's a very conflicted time because of the
26:00
S3: way she came to be prime Minister. Getting rid of
26:04
S3: Rudd while he was still prime minister and not very
26:07
S3: far into his into his term, and then almost losing
26:11
S3: the next election and being saved by a couple of independents.
26:15
S3: So there were those around her who, number one, either
26:20
S3: didn't like her because of the turmoil that, uh, um,
26:27
S3: put her into the job in the first place. And
26:31
S3: others who were worried that she wouldn't, um, she wouldn't
26:34
S3: be able to last, but she did. And a lot
26:37
S3: of people don't realize. But she got more legislation through
26:41
S3: Parliament than virtually anybody else in that short period. She
26:45
S3: was prime minister, and she did get attacked in quite
26:49
S3: unfair ways. Um, she was the first female prime minister.
26:54
S3: And you know that stuff about Ditch the Witch and
26:58
S3: all the rest of it, um, was, was utterly, utterly appalling.
27:02
S3: And when she finally cracked, I suppose when Tony Abbott
27:09
S3: was getting stuck into her, calling her a misogynist or
27:12
S3: whatever for backing Peter Slipper. Um, the speaker who was
27:18
S3: had been sending pretty vile emails and she did that
27:22
S3: big moment.
27:23
S8: So doing, I say to the leader of the opposition,
27:26
S8: I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by
27:30
S8: this man. I will not, and the government will not
27:34
S8: be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now,
27:39
S8: not ever.
27:41
S3: That raised her stakes, probably forever, with a pretty reasonable
27:47
S3: cohort of Australian voters. Others, of course, will never will
27:52
S3: never come to her side because, um, there is a,
27:57
S3: I think a pretty strong stream of sexism running through, uh,
28:06
S3: the harder edges of politics. And of course, she was
28:09
S3: undermined by Kevin Rudd all the way along to the
28:13
S3: point where she actually had to hand the prime ministership
28:17
S3: back to him, uh, at the very last minute. And
28:21
S3: of course, he couldn't save the save the ship either.
28:24
S3: So it was a, it was a conflicted period. I
28:27
S3: think she has come out of it that actually horrible period,
28:32
S3: I suppose, as a person who is highly respected because
28:38
S3: after she left the Prime Minister, she. She never looked
28:42
S3: back and and and complained.
28:45
S7: Tony has Pauline Hanson's research and surprised you. You covered
28:49
S7: her in her first period of popularity.
28:52
S3: I think it surprised everyone. The level of of of resurgence.
28:57
S3: I recall, as I mentioned, the 1998 surge when One
29:04
S3: Nation won 11 seats in the Parliament of of state,
29:09
S3: Parliament of Queensland. But you've got to remember later on
29:12
S3: that year, she she couldn't win her own seat. And
29:16
S3: the One Nation, uh, basically disintegrated with one one Senator.
29:22
S3: That was all for a long time. So this is
29:25
S3: a person who made a lot of noise for a
29:28
S3: lot of time. But once again, perhaps the times have
29:33
S3: suited her. There is a very strong feeling across country
29:39
S3: Australia that people outside the inner circles of the city
29:45
S3: and and so forth are being left out of the
29:49
S3: the equation. I know in my own territory I have
29:53
S3: a house in the country and I spent a lot
29:55
S3: of time down there. The roads are falling apart. We've
29:59
S3: lost our air services. There's only one train in the near.
30:05
S3: And people look at, say, Melbourne or the big cities
30:10
S3: and see billions of dollars being spent on infrastructure, and
30:14
S3: they feel left out. And they feel a lot of
30:18
S3: people clearly out there feel that, um, no one's speaking
30:22
S3: for them. And Pauline Hanson always has, people will say,
30:28
S3: and I would add, of course, that in country Australia,
30:32
S3: Sky TV is free to air and has been since 2018.
30:37
S3: And you go around the farms and so forth. I've
30:40
S3: got cousins and all. And and here in the corner is, uh,
30:44
S3: Sky TV sounding off against elitism and the major parties
30:51
S3: and how, how rotten, uh, is woke Australia and so
30:56
S3: forth and so forth. And that has, you know, it's
30:59
S3: all melded exactly the right time for, um, Pauline Hanson
31:04
S3: to fill that vacuum that I was talking about after,
31:08
S3: after Dutton when, uh, the coalition actually fell apart and
31:14
S3: then hasn't really put itself back together yet.
31:16
S1: Yeah. Tony, politics is so often about plotting and brawling and,
31:21
S1: you know, that's what we see from the outside, you know,
31:25
S1: all of that sort of conflict and the nasty stuff.
31:27
S1: But when you're covering politics, there are also moments of
31:30
S1: great emotional power when you realize that you're witnessing history
31:33
S1: and you're really up close to something very special. You
31:35
S1: would have seen many moments like that in your career.
31:38
S1: Do you want to talk us through 1 or 2
31:40
S1: of those?
31:41
S3: Yeah. Yeah, I have, um, and I should point out
31:44
S3: that a lot of politicians who arrive in Canberra arrive with,
31:49
S3: with the best of intentions, and they, they really believe
31:52
S3: they're going to, um, help society and change the nation
31:56
S3: and so forth. And they get rubbed pretty bare pretty quickly. Um,
32:01
S3: but talking about big moments, I suppose the one of
32:05
S3: the biggest was Kevin Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations.
32:10
S6: For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations,
32:16
S6: their descendants and for their families left behind. We say sorry.
32:24
S6: To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the
32:27
S6: sisters for the breaking up of families and communities, we
32:32
S6: say sorry, and for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted
32:38
S6: on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.
32:45
S3: That was something that had had been playing on Australia's
32:50
S3: conscience for a long time. Some people, of course, would
32:54
S3: disagree with that. But when Kevin Rudd stood up in
32:58
S3: Parliament and there were a lot of indigenous people there,
33:02
S3: there were a lot of people who had been stolen
33:06
S3: as as children and had suffered a great deal trying
33:10
S3: to put their lives back together. And when he stood
33:13
S3: up there and made his apology, we are sorry. And
33:19
S3: the the fluttering of handkerchiefs in the in the crowd,
33:24
S3: the tears, the silence was absolutely profound. I saw something
33:31
S3: similar when Julia Gillard apologised to another stolen generation, I
33:37
S3: suppose those who were taken from their mothers, their single
33:42
S3: mothers and adopted out or put in homes or whatever.
33:46
S3: And the same thing occurred there, that welling up of emotion. Yes.
33:50
S3: And you suddenly realised that these were people who had
33:56
S3: just wanted to have been heard and recognised. And here
33:59
S3: was a Prime Minister doing it. Rudd for the for
34:03
S3: the stolen indigenous generations. Guillard for. For others. Um, and
34:10
S3: they were very important moments. The Gillard one was unfortunate
34:15
S3: because in the background, as soon as it was over, uh,
34:19
S3: there was, there was more, you know, conflict politics going on.
34:23
S1: I remember that day. It was yeah, the best and
34:25
S1: the worst of politics. I mean, I got goosebumps just
34:28
S1: hearing you talk about those moments because yeah, I was there,
34:31
S1: you know, for the second one. And you realize that
34:35
S1: politics does have the power to change people's lives for
34:37
S1: the better, despite all of the nasty stuff that we
34:40
S1: sometimes see in the cynicism that we sometimes hold about
34:43
S1: our political process. Tony, is there anything else you want
34:45
S1: to leave us with? I mean, you you're sort of
34:47
S1: walking out of the press gallery, hopefully not for the
34:50
S1: last time, but you're taking a step back. I know
34:53
S1: that you have always treated your colleagues with so much
34:55
S1: kindness and respect and warmth, and you're a very generous colleague,
34:59
S1: and I know that you consider your position a very
35:01
S1: privileged one, because you love what you do and you
35:03
S1: never take it for granted.
35:05
S3: Yeah, I'm the luckiest bloke in the world. You know,
35:07
S3: I came from a small country district and a school.
35:13
S3: I've spoken about this before at a boarding school in
35:15
S3: the country. I looked across from the top floor dormitories
35:20
S3: at the Grampians and thought, I want to see what's
35:23
S3: beyond there. Well, journalism has allowed me to see what
35:27
S3: is beyond there, right around the world and across Australia and,
35:30
S3: and the people with whom I've worked um, are really family,
35:37
S3: you know, and I love these people and um, I'll
35:43
S3: miss them desperately. It's the pleasure of going to work
35:48
S3: either in the days of Canberra when I used to
35:52
S3: come into the press gallery all the time, or now
35:54
S3: nowadays in the in the newsroom of the age in Melbourne,
35:59
S3: um there are all these brilliant people, a lot of
36:02
S3: them young, uh, a lot of them. So, uh, full
36:05
S3: of ideas and full of emotion and, and passion and, uh, it,
36:12
S3: it just makes your heart sing to be able to
36:14
S3: do those sort of things.
36:15
S7: I would just add that, you know, the prime Minister
36:18
S7: and opposition leader often give these speeches in the House
36:21
S7: after Question time on milestones or anniversaries or for formalities,
36:25
S7: but they can often look as if they're going through
36:27
S7: the motions. But you could sense that both of them
36:29
S7: really meant what they said. The Prime Minister's speech in
36:31
S7: particular was quite thoughtful. There was some emotion in there,
36:35
S7: and the opposition leader spoke really nicely as well. And
36:39
S7: I've seen a bunch of ministers ask me questions about
36:42
S7: you this week. I've seen come in some come into
36:44
S7: our office to chat to you. So all very fitting
36:47
S7: to Mark.
36:47
S3: All very embarrassing.
36:49
S7: I know it's been embarrassing to you, but people, people
36:52
S7: want to express.
36:52
S3: That somebody had set this up and, you know, a
36:55
S3: bit like somebody reading your obituary before you're gone. But
37:00
S3: it was it was, of course, lovely. And my family
37:03
S3: and my kids and so forth will, will treasure those
37:06
S3: moments because they've got them on video. They knew what
37:09
S3: was going to happen, I didn't. Um, but yeah, it
37:13
S3: was pretty special. And a nice, uh, a nice end
37:17
S3: to this part of my career.
37:19
S7: You'll still be writing.
37:20
S3: I will. As a contributor for The Age and perhaps
37:25
S3: the Sydney Morning Herald.
37:26
S7: Very good.
37:27
S1: We can't wait to read what you do next Tony,
37:29
S1: and we will miss you. We will miss you having
37:32
S1: having you as a day to day colleague. It's been
37:34
S1: a pleasure to work with you. Thank you for being
37:36
S1: on the podcast and for sharing your harvesting those moments
37:40
S1: with us, and we'll hopefully see you again soon.
37:43
S3: Thanks very much, Jacqueline, and it was a pleasure working
37:45
S3: with you too, I must say.
37:46
S1: Yeah, it was fun. We had some fun.
37:50
S7: Thanks, Tony.
37:54
S1: You can read all of our political news on our website,
37:57
S1: ca.com.au or smh.com.au. Today's episode was produced by Kai Wong
38:03
S1: with help from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills,
38:06
S1: and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick.
38:11
S1: Before you go, follow Inside Politics and leave a review
38:14
S1: for us on Apple or Spotify. I'm Jacqueline Maley, thank
38:17
S1: you for listening.